Page 40 - AAMT-19 License Version

162 force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in
163 the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered
164 power. Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him
165 to himself. No such conditions can exist as descending into
166 vice and its attendant sufferings apart from vicious
167 inclinations; or ascending into virtue and its pure happiness
168 without the continued cultivation of virtuous aspirations; and
169 man, therefore, as the lord and master of thought, is the
170 maker of himself, the shaper and author of environment.
171 Even at birth the soul comes to its own, and through every
172 step of its earthly pilgrimage it attracts those combinations of
173 conditions which reveal itself, which are the reflections of its
174 own purity and impurity, its strength and weakness.
175 Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they
176 are. Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at
177 every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with
178 their own food, be it foul or clean. The "divinity that shapes
179 our ends" is in ourselves; it is our very Self. Man is manacled
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